Makeruna Makendo 2
The final game in this review is Makeruna Makendo 2, which unlike the first two which lean towards the puzzle side of gaming is your general run-of-the-mill 2D fighter with its own twists. Featuring a small single-digit character cast each with their names beginning with “Ma”, your goal is of course to defeat your opponent in a number of different environments and come out on top. The game comes with a storyline which plays occasionally between battles, but for the purpose of this review I haven’t dived much into translating it.
The core gameplay is what you would expect – you move with the D-Pad and attack with the buttons to form combos which depending on the combinations should cause damage to your opponent. How Makeruna Makendo 2 attempts to differ from other fighting games is they have incorporated a leveling system into the title which increases a number of attributes for your character from hit points to attack strength. It is an interesting system that rewards players for being active in fights however felt at times battles can be one-sided for both parties. Outside of this, the game provides you with Player vs Comp and Player 1 vs Player 2 modes of fighting.
The game’s characters are interestingly designed and the stage designs are decent and well animated, but the musical tracks are simple and quite heavy on the ears after a moderate amount of time spent on a stage.
Makeruna Makendo 2 puts up a solid performance overall, but at the same time outside of the leveling system doesn’t really offer anything in terms of replayability or battle complexity. It may be a worthwhile installment for those who are curious about the fighting genre from the era – but otherwise there are better titles that are part of GungHo Online Entertainment America’s classics release set, and the fighting genre in general.
Overall Score: C-
For the original post this came from, view “GungHo Online Entertainment America – Japanese PS1 Classics Review Part 1“
